Keeping Secret

And then it was there, two hundred yards ahead. Salvation in the form of a yellow inflatable dingy. All we had to do was get to it and—

The pack poured out from the woods between us and the boat.

Holden skidded to a stop, and I slammed into his back. Behind us, more of the wolves spilled out from between the trees, leaving us surrounded on the beach within sight of our escape but unable to reach it.

I was unarmed, and we were outnumbered ten to one. We’d be able to take a few of them out, but we were right back where we’d been the night before, and this time they weren’t going to play nice. Their leader said they were to kill us, and their lean, menacing faces promised to follow through on his orders.

“Holden,” I whispered against the back of his neck.

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry.”

He squeezed my hand and held it over his heart. “So am I.”

I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead against the damp material of his shirt, breathing him in one last time. Any second now they would come, and we would make our last stand on this shitty bog.

Any second now.

A wolf made a worried yip, and another whimpered. I opened one eye and looked to the woods, then opened the other eye and stared in shock. A faint red glow, swirling like a tornado, was advancing through the trees towards us. The sharp scent of urine punctuated the air as several of the wolves wet themselves before running into the woods.

One of the younger ones, directly in line of the red light, panicked and ran into the water, splashing around like a madman. Suddenly he screamed and the splashes doubled, a frothy boil of water tossing on the surface showing flashes of blood-red meat and green-scaled skin. A gator had gotten him. The water calmed, the scent of blood mingling with the other fear odors, creating an atmosphere of terror amongst the remaining wolves.

They scattered, leaving Holden and me alone on the beach still embracing as we watched the red light emerge from the tree line and stop a few feet from us. Then the light died, and in its place stood a small, fragile-looking woman stooped over a wooden cane.

Her hair was the brightest white I’d ever seen and was bundled in a braid, wrapped around the crown of her head. Earrings made of feathers and small bones dangled from her wrinkled lobes, and each of her bone-thin fingers had a silver ring on it.

She stared at us, her eyes shockingly blue and young-looking in contrast to the rest of her.

“La Sorcière,” I whispered.

The woman smiled, giving her the appearance of a sweet old granny. But sweet grannies don’t make a pack of feral wolves piss themselves.

There was more crashing in the woods, and I tensed against Holden. A moment later a slight girl, about eighteen, emerged from the tree line, sputtering so many curses I had no doubt she was my missing sister.

“Hells bells, mémère, did you have to just up and vanish? What was the damned—” She fell silent when she saw us. “What’s going on?”

The old woman pointed one frighteningly thin finger at us, and I winced, expecting some kind of magical assault. None came, but my reaction made her smile widen. She was a twisted old lady. If I wasn’t so damned terrified of her, I might like her. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that some of her blood was running through my veins.

Eugenia, in spite of being my half-sister, couldn’t have looked less like me. She was tall and slim, and her legs were well-muscled, probably from running after the witch. Black hair hung in a long ponytail down to her butt, and she had a fantastic tan.

La Sorcière crooked her finger at Eugenia, and my sister bent down to let the woman whisper in her ear. I don’t know what the old lady said, but when Eugenia’s eyes went wide and she started staring at me, I had a pretty good idea what the gist of it was.

Eugenia bounded past the old witch and came up to Holden and me. “Let’s get you two out of here before Carn sends reinforcements. There will be time to talk later.” Her hand rested on my arm, and she squeezed gently. “I’m glad she found you in time.”

“So am I.”

La Sorcière was already toddling back into the trees, looking about as dangerous and unassuming as Yoda.

Judge her by her size, I will not, I thought.

Holden and I followed Eugenia and my great-grandmother into the darkness, this time without the showy display of lights. When we came to a huge sycamore, La Sorcière stopped. Eugenia looked over her shoulder at us and smiled with poorly concealed pride. “This is the best part.”

The witch touched the tree with a bare hand, and it groaned like a dog receiving a belly rub. The trunk shuddered once, and the whole base of the tree ripped open, exposing a doorway. Eugenia waited for the witch to go in then stepped back for us to enter ahead of her. “Totally safe, I promise.”

At this point I would have walked face first into a normal tree if someone told me it would give me an alternative to Carn and his ferals. And, as a considerate follow-up gift from the Fates, we’d also been rescued by the very people I’d been sent to find. Sometimes a girl gets lucky.

And sometimes luck has nothing to do with it.

On the other side of the tree door we entered a space I was at a loss to comprehend. It was a house, but it was also still the forest. Sycamores had grown together in a tight circle so fused by age and the forces of nature, all the trees had begun to form as one. The canopy had sealed in on itself, Spanish moss dangling over our heads like a green chandelier. The space was lit, but I couldn’t say how because there was no electricity. The roots of the trees had warped to form wide ledges that were laid out with blankets, and a black cauldron sat on top of a smoldering fire next to the door.

“Wow,” I said.

“Amazing,” Holden agreed.

“You live here? You’re like Luke Skywalker after he crashed into—”

Holden squeezed my hand and shook his head.

Eugenia, to her credit, laughed. “She does kind of look a bit like Yoda, doesn’t she?”

I’m not sure if the witch did it to be funny, but she reached out then and cracked both Eugenia and me in the head with her cane. Witches didn’t appreciate being compared to a nine-hundred-year-old Jedi, apparently. It wasn’t an insult. Yoda was a total badass.

Be a wicked smartass, I will not.

Yeah, right. That would be the day.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I awoke the next night in Holden’s arms under a tight canopy of mossy trees, and my first thought was, Oh, I must be dreaming.

A gentle clanging drew my attention to the corner space of the tree house where La Sorcière was stooped over a cauldron whispering words that definitely weren’t English while breaking off sprigs of fresh herbs into the bubbling broth.

So, not dreaming after all then.

When I tried to leave the root bed, Holden protested by snuggling me closer and nipping at the back of my neck. I elbowed him. “Wake up,” I demanded.

“Oof,” he replied. After he took a moment to chase the sleep away, he added, “Oh.”

The memory of the previous two days came back with the force of a physical blow, and I shuddered violently. Being able to sleep without fear for my safety or Holden’s had been the greatest gift these women could have given me.

Eugenia came through the door, her arrival announced by a sigh from the tree, and dumped a stack of dry wood next to the witch. The old woman asked a question by lifting her white eyebrows a fraction of an inch. “No, no problems,” Eugenia responded.

Amazing what kind of understanding formed between people when they were alone together for five years.

Seeing we were awake, my sister’s expression broke into a wide smile. She snapped her fingers once, and whatever phantom light had illuminated the space the previous evening lit itself again. It shouldn’t have surprised me that Eugenia had picked up a thing or two during her time with La Sorcière, but I still had trouble understanding how the girl could be both a werewolf and a witch. The two were such different forms of magic they shouldn’t be allowed to peacefully coexist in one body.

“Mémère told me who you were,” she said excitedly.

“What did she tell you?” I wasn’t sure how much the old woman knew, and I wouldn’t be tricked into confessing something the girl didn’t actually know.

“That you’re my sister.”

I nodded.

“How long have you known?” Eugenia asked.

“Do you have a watch?”

I explained my chat with Callum, touched briefly on my mother abandoning me and why Grandmere worried it wouldn’t be safe for me, which was why I hadn’t been with the pack when Eugenia and Ben were born. I told her everything, figuring she had earned my honesty. If not for her and La Sorcière, I wouldn’t be alive to tell the story. I admitted, finally, I was only there to take her back to the pack.

After I was finished I felt exhausted all over again. I needed to feed soon, and there weren’t a lot of options out here unless I wanted to hit an alligator up for a donation. Holden must have sensed the building tension in me because he reached out and stroked my hair.

“You want me to go back to Callum?” Eugenia asked, but from her tone she knew the answer to her own question.

It wasn’t an outright refusal, so I continued. “I know you left for a reason, and believe me when I say I understand what a bunch of uptight assholes the werewolves can be. But I’ve started to think Callum might have our best interests in mind. I don’t think he means to do us harm.”

“But he isn’t the only reason you’re here.”

“No. Without his blessing I can’t marry my mate. If we don’t get married, then the entire Eastern pack could be crippled by in-fighting and uncertainty. I’m pack protector. I can’t let anything jeopardize the pack.”

“And?”

“And someone is trying to kill me. Once Lucas and I are married, I think they’ll stop.”

“You think by bringing me back to Callum you’ll be able to get married, save your pack and save your life?” She had been sorting through bundles of dried herbs, tying them with bits of twine, but she stopped to ask me one last question. “That’s an awful lot of pressure, don’t you think?”